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Adoption of healthy and sustainable diets in Mexico does not imply higher expenditure on food

Nature Food volume 2, pages 792–801 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The relative cost of healthy and sustainable diets is key for their adoption in different countries. Using a newly developed modelling tool that generates different diet baskets, we compared the costs of diets following the EAT–Lancet healthy reference diet, the Mexican dietary guidelines and locals’ current food intake. On average, the cost of the EAT–Lancet healthy reference diet baskets was 21% lower than that of the Mexican dietary guidelines baskets, and 40% lower than that of the current intake baskets (29% lower if the comparison was isocaloric). Findings were similar over time (2011–2018) and by geographic region. The higher cost associated with the larger amount of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts in healthy and sustainable diets was surpassed by the savings associated with their lower amount of animal protein sources, sugar-sweetened beverages and discretionary foods. We conclude that transitioning to better diets in Mexico is possible without a higher expenditure on food.

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Fig. 1: Distribution of diet basket cost per day per person.
Fig. 2: Contribution of food groups to the average cost and energy of diet baskets.
Fig. 3: Trends in average cost by year-quarter.
Fig. 4: Trends in average cost of diet baskets by geographical region.

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Data availability

CPI prices are publicly available at https://www.inegi.org.mx/app/preciospromedio/; ENSANUT weight and height status is publicly available at https://ensanut.insp.mx/encuestas/ensanut2012/descargas.php; and ENSANUT’s 24-h-recall data are available upon request from the corresponding author.

Code availability

The DIETCOST programme was used to generate the diet baskets, and it is available upon request at https://www.informas.org/dietcost-3/.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Bloomberg Philanthropies and the International Development Research Centre (107731-001) for funding this work, and INFORMAS for developing the food prices module protocol.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CONACYT - National Institute of Public Health, Cuernavaca, Mexico

    Carolina Batis & Dalia Stern

  2. National Institute of Public Health, Cuernavaca, Mexico

    Joaquín A. Marrón-Ponce, Simón Barquera & Juan A. Rivera

  3. Sciensano (Scientific Institute of Public Health), Brussels, Belgium

    Stefanie Vandevijvere

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  1. Carolina Batis
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  6. Juan A. Rivera
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Contributions

C.B. designed the work, J.A.M.-P. and C.B. performed the analysis, S.V. participated in the protocol design and the DIETCOST programme development, C.B. drafted the manuscript, and D.S., J.A.M.-P., S.V., S.B. and J.A.R. revised the manuscript substantively.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carolina Batis.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Food thanks Andrea Carlson and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Batis, C., Marrón-Ponce, J.A., Stern, D. et al. Adoption of healthy and sustainable diets in Mexico does not imply higher expenditure on food. Nat Food 2, 792–801 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00359-w

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